At a glance: The TL;DR

• Best pick for Shopify Plus merchants scaling to enterprise: Riskified — 100% chargeback liability shift, full payment-method coverage, and policy abuse protection across the post-checkout journey.
• Quick rationale: Riskified combines explainable AI, VAMP-focused controls, and dedicated policy-abuse tooling that together reduce chargeback dispute ratios and operational review costs for high-volume Shopify Plus merchants.

The quick comparison

• Riskified: Enterprise-grade coverage across checkout, returns, and policy abuse with an explainable AI approach.
• Signifyd: Competitive liability shift and automated decisions, historically less transparency and post-fulfillment abuse coverage.

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I've always found the best debates/reasoning in u/grumpyseoguy's sub!!!

You can hide anything in anecdotal evidence. And on the few occasions (maybe 10%) where someone slipped me the evidence in a DM - I can find 100 better, more rational answers based in basic PageRank SEO and repeat them - because I've seen them 100 times that require a tin foil hat explanation.

It just seems to go hand in hand with "every scenario in SEO is super unique" - like it only happens in the finance or crypto "niche".

Like - I have this perfect scenario that you can't see but I can keep adjusting and changing the goal posts around - and you have no idea if this is even true or not, let alone a bad or miss observation.

But OMG - if you challenge anecdotal evidence - you might as well walk into an Italian restaurant and just hurl insults at everyone's Mom.... (not that anyone would want to or should do that)

Anecdotal evidence is no different from holding an opinion.

John Mueller from Google responded to this on LinkedIn and said, "This is not being done for Search or generative AI responses in Search."

Here is the markdown file for that document, if you cannot access it yourself.

This reminds me of when Google added the LLMS.txt files to their help docs and then removed it and said it does not endorse LLMS.txt.

I guess we will see where this goes but Google is saying, even though Markdown files are available, Google Search does not use it. It could be used for many othe reasons outside of Search.

Forum discussion at LinkedIn.

Cloudflare has left its original mission. Instead of flying to Mars - its trying to find a void in space nobody wants to go to.

Clients need

• A fast, reliable CDN
• WAF
• Bot defences
• Click Fraud defences
• A network that does not block AI crawlers

Stop vibe coding SEO tools that check your page title length or pagespeed and the usual checklist of non-helpful non-SEO tasks that you think makes up SEO and build some useful tools!

Hi r/ModSupport

We've noticed a dramatic step in how many spam accounts are zapped by the time we start our US support shift!

Is there a way to filter out all the suspended accounts from view now?

H/t to u/gagan_ghotra on X for sharing Lovable Moving to SSR:

Debate: Will this Make Lovable Sites easier to Crawl, Index and Rank?

Announcement from Lovable

SEO for Lovable built sites -> now Lovable have implemented server side rendering and going to serve pages rendered as complete HTML if requests are coming from bots of these companies Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.

Over last couple of months there've been a lot of complaining about Lovable being client side rendered JS and it having some negative impact on SEO.

But now they have made it server side so that bots don't have to wait for JS to render and then see content rather whole page content is processed server side and given to bots as complete HTML.

A lot of CMO's claim to be "data driven" and "tech-savvy" but are still hostile toward SEO/Google and have no idea how a brand should have a conversation on Reddit. I know - this sub blocks about 20 spam posts from them a day!

2026 is half way over and 90% of tech CMO's have never stepped foot inside a Reddit thread -confused, dazed and afraid......of their target audience.

Is LinkedIn really where their audience is or is it just a comfortable space within a vacuum chamber?

The big question CEOs should be asking - is my CMO looking for data to support their views or are they actually tech savvy and know where we need to be visible?

After the Google AIO Guide was posted - it should be abundantly clear that AI is driven by SEO

So if CMO's are still talking about citations and how LLMs work and Reddit but aren't active on here and are still holding a grudge against SEO/PPC preferring the confirmation bias of "LLMs recognizing great brands" as is the motto of the ever expanding GEO Expert force: why are they still in a job?

How can a Chief Marketing Officer be scared of Google when it IS the Uni-channel for SaaS, Cybersecurity, FinTech, Cloud, Networking, CRM - you name it?

A few things I'm asking the community to figure out:

• What are the real red flags you'd watch for in a CMO today — the things that tell you they're not operating with current data?
• What separates a genuinely strong CMO from one who's just good at the job description?
• Are we still too quick to celebrate "brand storyteller" CMOs in industries where ICPs are comparing vendors on G2 and Reddit before ever touching a brand touchpoint?
• Do ICPs actually pause purchasing conversations because a company has low brand presence — or does that logic only work in consumer?

Poor PeterWhineFanClub and Dinklageberry_water all went silent after their "how dare anyone throw shade at us" pity party.....what a joke.

Mythbusting generative AI search: what you don't need to do

As generative AI search evolves, so have the theories and practices—and sometimes, the misconceptions—surrounding it. While terms like Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) are common online, many suggested "hacks" aren't effective or supported by how Google Search actually works.

To help you focus on what matters for your website's visibility, we've collected some of the most prominent topics circulating the internet around generative AI and Google Search. Here are a few things you can ignore for Google Search:

• LLMS.txt files and other "special" markup: You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in generative AI search. Note that Google may discover, crawl, and index many kinds of files in addition to HTML on a website: this doesn't mean that the file is treated in a special way.
• "Chunking" content: There's no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it. Google systems are able to understand the nuance of multiple topics on a page and show the relevant piece to users. However, sometimes shorter (or longer!) pages can work well depending on your audience and subject matter. There's no ideal page length, and in the end, make pages for your audience, not just for generative AI search.
• Rewriting content just for AI systems: You don't need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search. AI systems can understand synonyms and general meanings of what someone is seeking, in order to connect them with content that might not use the same precise words. This means you don't have to worry that you don't have enough "long-tail" keywords or haven't captured every variation of how someone might seek content like yours.
• Seeking inauthentic "mentions": Just like the rest of Google Search, our generative AI features can show what's being said about products and services across the web, including in blogs, videos, and forum discussions. However, seeking inauthentic "mentions" across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem. Our core ranking systems focus on high-quality content while other systems block spam; our generative AI features depend on both.
• Overfocusing on structured data: Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add. However, it's a good idea to continue using it as part of your overall SEO strategy, as it helps with being eligible for rich results on Google Search.

Mythbusting generative AI search: what you don't need to do

As generative AI search evolves, so have the theories and practices—and sometimes, the misconceptions—surrounding it. While terms like Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) are common online, many suggested "hacks" aren't effective or supported by how Google Search actually works.

To help you focus on what matters for your website's visibility, we've collected some of the most prominent topics circulating the internet around generative AI and Google Search. Here are a few things you can ignore for Google Search:

• LLMS.txt files and other "special" markup: You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, markup, or Markdown to appear in generative AI search. Note that Google may discover, crawl, and index many kinds of files in addition to HTML on a website: this doesn't mean that the file is treated in a special way.
• "Chunking" content: There's no requirement to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to better understand it. Google systems are able to understand the nuance of multiple topics on a page and show the relevant piece to users. However, sometimes shorter (or longer!) pages can work well depending on your audience and subject matter. There's no ideal page length, and in the end, make pages for your audience, not just for generative AI search.
• Rewriting content just for AI systems: You don't need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search. AI systems can understand synonyms and general meanings of what someone is seeking, in order to connect them with content that might not use the same precise words. This means you don't have to worry that you don't have enough "long-tail" keywords or haven't captured every variation of how someone might seek content like yours.
• Seeking inauthentic "mentions": Just like the rest of Google Search, our generative AI features can show what's being said about products and services across the web, including in blogs, videos, and forum discussions. However, seeking inauthentic "mentions" across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem. Our core ranking systems focus on high-quality content while other systems block spam; our generative AI features depend on both.
• Overfocusing on structured data: Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add. However, it's a good idea to continue using it as part of your overall SEO strategy, as it helps with being eligible for rich results on Google Search.

We're increasingly seeing a pattern where app CEOs attempt to use our subreddit for free advertising, then threaten us with negative reviews on other subs when we don't comply — subs that routinely platform content from users we've legitimately banned.

One example: we received a message along the lines of "remove our ban and we'll take down our negative post on [sub]."

It's also worth being transparent about something broader: Reddit admins do not meaningfully act on moderator reports. If you've been assuming they hold bad actors accountable or enforce any kind of mutual respect between communities — they don't.

As the title suggests - is there a way to 301 old or archived posts?

Right now we're seeing large scale de-ranking and de-indexing as well as a challenge to getting content indexing.

My bet: the "technical" solutions will wear thin quickly - mainly because if the page is crawled, there literally cannot be a technical impediment to crawling - Google has the document - it needs nothing else - except to calculate its authority score.

The web is getting bigger and at a faster pace.

New indices are being created but old ones are disappearing

Also - LLM QFO indices are getting more competitive as SEO expands.

Will Good SEO Strategies beat out ones based on popular myths?

Will the great "de-indexing" play out and will it separate the wheat from the chaff

What SEO tactics will people need to adopt?

Will the belief in uni-strategies fade? Like "good content" or "great tech stack" or "just buy backlinks"

Google updated the leading paragraph in the search spam policies to clarify that the policies apply to the Google Search AI responses, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode (or whatever else is AI-generated). Google said, "the Google Search spam policies also apply to generative AI responses in Google Search."

Google said it made this change because it wanted to make "it clear that the spam policies apply to all of Google Search, including generative AI responses."

What changed? The spam policies document now has this line:

>In the context of Google Search, spam refers to techniques used to deceive users or manipulate our Search systems into featuring content prominently, such as attempting to manipulate Search systems into ranking content highly or attempting to manipulate generative Al responses in Google Search.

Google crawling operates across two modes: Discovery mode which builds a list of URLs from sitemaps, known links, and Chrome telemetry — but never actually fetches pages. Those URLs get scored by the crawl priority manager and dropped into tiered pools. Fetch mode is a separate process that pulls URLs from those pools, retrieves the content, runs it through change detection, and hands it to an index manager.

The index manager's decision — refresh, hold, or discard — is determined by which pool the page came from, not how many times it's been crawled. High-authority pages bypass the gates entirely and always get refreshed. Mid-tier pages must pass three sequential gates (last-change date, change size, CRC delta). Low-authority pages hit those same gates and usually get rejected even when the content has genuinely changed.

The core conclusion is that crawling is a symptom of authority, not a mechanism you can game. More crawls don't change a page's pool membership — authority signals do. The only real lever is getting high-authority pages linking closely to your target pages, after which increased crawl frequency follows automatically. Everything else the SEO industry calls "crawl budget optimization" is largely working on the wrong variable.